[X] Aggressively move to the basement to stop whatever activity they're doing down there
<<We don't have time to methodically clear the structure. Let's go to Variant Five.>>
The usual preparation for an assault like this is a run through in virtual, sometimes conducted just before a structure is breached in live time. The drawback to this is that it takes time, often precious, and some teams prefer virtual maps of the building combined with clear procedures against unknown structures.
Grey Shift have a new system they claim combines the virtues of both. Rather than simply a virtual run through, it can generate a simulation of the structure and download memories of a series of runs into your mind. It lets you know a structure like this like the back of your hand. Know three or four ways to enter each room like it's a virtual deathmatch arena you've played obsessively. Despite the Firewatchers' suspicion, it seems to work well enough.
Really, it's not that much better than virtual for a well planned point assault like this, but it did let you generate a lot more plans.
Variant Five is a straight shot through the marble and wood heart of the building, gumming as many external doors as you can and setting proximity kill devices in your wake to cover yourselves.
As you go you look around, trying to match what you see with your memories of the place. Wood panels and great static paintings. The place really is chintzy. You wonder how many bugs get in through these old style walls and how much energy is devoted to temperature control. The Communion habit of building in this faux olden style is just dreadful. You'd like to see more of their religious art. Z/S's tattoos for instance, they have a strange, disquieting elegance you're drawn to. Maybe this is what it is to see a ruling class develop. To see many resources devoted into a retreat into unreal nostalgia.
You worry, for a moment, you're being prejudiced, then push the thought away to concentrate on the task at hand.
The stack forms up into column, with Hayako, Asura and Mirareki leading, and the four Luyus spread out in a stern guard. You steal glances at the Firewatch team as you move. They all have the best gear they can get, the kind of expensive hobbyist gear that line units don't tend to bother with because it takes too much fab time or too rare a source. Z/S is wearing Dark Rose smart armour, which she must have imported. You wonder where Asura comes from. Her design isn't one you've seen before.
They've definitely done this before. You wish you'd had the time to really get to know them before the mission.
<<There's pressure on the drone screen.>> Mirareki reports. You bring up the view in the side of your vision. A miniature battle is already taking place, reconnaissance micros darting and weaving in tiny dogfights. Creep drones attacking one another in the restricted spaces of the house.. A war of insect sized fighters and missiles too small to see in the normal mode of vision. Mirareki has it handled, but it's another sign that the house still has defenders.
<<Continue movement. We'll hit the basement and make them come to us.>> You've arrived on the ground floor, in the huge open ballroom hallway. Another servant is slumped near the stairs, unconscious. Z/S moves to wrap her up as your guns track the entrances, and you distribute proximity munitions.
<<Any sign of threat?>>
<<Not between you and the basement.>> Reizay reports. <<There were a couple of automated guard machines down there but they withdrew as soon as you breached.>>
They obviously don't want to engage you in an area you have such total information supremacy. You pass through the kitchen area, wincing slightly at the thermals coming off what appears to be some kind of hydrocarbon cooking system, and some vile blue and white floor.
<<This place sure is ugly,>> says Lunamist. You're glad someone from a Communion background agrees.
You move up to the door. <<Breach and put a bang in.>>
Mirareki sticks a charge on the door, and Z/S pulls out a stun grenade from her vest. <<I have control>> Mirareki says as the rest of you get in position to flow into the room when it goes off.
The door blows inwards and the stun grenade flies inside. There's a bright flash and a series of bangs. Hayako and Asura step out to pie across the door, heavy rifle up. The power armour shoots and then dives to one side as the doorway detonates in a spray of dust and kinetic rounds. Fire chews through the wall at all of you and you dive for cover, not really finding any except to get as low as you can. You hug the floor and brace your gun to return fire through the wall with your guns cameras.
There's at least a fire team of enemy in the hallway beyond, hunkered behind the silver protrusions of a much different architecture. Several large metallic cover surfaces hold positions for two communion in tactical gear and a small robot. More threatening though is the fire support bot, a disk shaped thing with a huge revolving cannon on top.
As the firing starts there's a bang and one of the gummed doors on the second level explodes out. Pepperpot drones are spilling out of one of the upper hallways. Luyu opens fire, and you hear the brassy clang of the hypervelocity drone gun and the buzz of plasma bolts ripple back to you down the stairs. The sounds are followed closely by the actine flash of a directional proximity grenade followed an instant later by the thump of its charge. Checking the view from up there you see several of the drones are down and the others are pinned by the fire from Luyu.
Now you need to work the problem down here.
It appears some others have ideas how to solve it. Lunamist 'Lunamist Warscythe' Warscythe shouts "I'm going!", and dives through the doorway. Her defence aura glows brightly as she triggers some kind of short term overboost. Rounds spang off the aura and her swords spinning arc as she dives out of the doorway's fatal funnel. The other firewatchers pour fire after her, but the cosplayers jerky motions seem to be what's keeping her from being hit. She rolls under the stream of minigun fire, and throws a grenade over the smaller bots cover, silencing it. The crab robot rocks back, swinging its to track her, but she's ahead of its arc, bounces off the floor and slices the turret off its back.
The move is rendered slightly less cool when it bucks and kicks her out of the air, but she lands on her feet, and then the grenade she dropped down the thing's turret detonates and it collapses.
You prepare to move forward. The two Communion security troops turn and run, and fire from Asura knocks them down.
<<Holy shit,>> mutters Mirareki.
<<See. She's talented.>> Luyu says.
<<How's it looking up there?>>
<<They've pulled back after I kicked the shit out of their initial rush,>> she says. Smoke is pouring out of the breached door upstairs, and Luyu has her replicator out and printing missiles. <<I think they'll try again soon.>>
<<Hold there while we advance.>>
You pick yourself up and move carefully forward. The Firewatch Team spread out ahead as you move into the basement, guns up. It's a short walk to another large blast door. <<This is too much for a charge,>> says Mirareki.
<<Hah! There is nothing my sacred blade cannot cut! Cosmo Divider! >> Lunamist swings her sword through the edges as if there's nothing there, then kicks. The door falls inwards from neat slices, revealing a large basement filled with boxes and dust covers. Bits of Neredi artefacts. There's no sign of movement. You can see a set of doors on the other side.
<<Drones are still looking for a way in.>> Mirareki reports. <<But scans indicate that's where the enemy is held up.>>
<<Look out!>> Z/S calls and shoots. Her carbine rounds blow through one of the sheets as something gleaming and skeletal erupts free. Like the hunched and tentacled form of a Neredi, for a moment, before the air around it splits and flickers and the room unravels into silverfish shoals of debris.
<<Forcefield weapon! Watch->> Z/S cuts out as it punches her back into the wall behind.
You recognize the material as post-Nereidi. It looks very much like the statues you saw in the Temple. Just clawed and malevolent. An ancient warrior come back from the past to kill you. Somehow, you don't know how, still working.
[ ] It can't be in good condition. Just surround the thing and pour firepower onto it.
[ ] Call Luyu to move in to back you up and try to pull the thing into an ambush with her.
[ ] Retreat immediately and try to get the thing to follow you out so that firepower can be brought to bear from the gunships.
[ ] Have Reizay and Alex try to subtly take out its control link, even if this might risk revealing Alex's presence to Firewatch and Mara.
